This paper presents a case study of the author’s Virtual Reality work. Turpin’s Cave, it explores the extent to which Virtual Reality (VR) can rise above media hype and deliver politically and socially engaged, post-humanist experiences, ones which critically address neoliberal constructs of choice, democracy and user interaction.

Turpin's Cave operates within an era in which participation and democracy are arguably all but subsumed by commercial interests and market mechanisms. The paper will examine whether the humanist heritage of Boal, Brecht and Marx, and of first-and second-wave feminism can answer any of the questions and concerns of a post-humanist era.

In presenting this work the author seeks to deconstruct some of the rhetoric of empathy and immersivity that has grown around VR, evaluating whether current media obsessions with the form are justified, or whether the technology is doomed to be rapidly subsumed by ever accelerating hype cycles.